Contributors

JOANNE ARNOTT is a Metis/mixed-blood writer, activist, blogger, mother of six. Little known as a thinker, that is in fact what she most likes to do. Books include nonfiction, Breasting the Waves: On Writing & Healing, fiction, Ma MacDonald, and poetry, Wiles of Girlhood, My Grass Cradle, Steepy Mountain: love poetry, Mother Time: Poems New & Selected. As editor: Salish Seas: an anthology of text + image (2011).

For much of his life, KEN BELFORD has lived in the vicinity of the headwaters of the Nass River, an old growth unroaded region in Northwest BC. He is the author of six books of poetry, including Lan(d)guage (Caitlin Press 2008), and Decompositions (Talon Books 2010).

A member of the house of Geel, MICHAEL BLACKSTOCK of Kamloops is a forester, mediator, and author of Faces in the Forest: First Nations Art Created on Living Trees (2001), Salmon Run: A Florilegium of Aboriginal Ecological Poetry (2005), and Oceaness (2010). Of Gitxsan (Hazelton) and Euro-Canadian descent, Blackstock has a Master of Art degree in First Nations Studies. He has served as a member of the UNESCO-IHP Expert Advisory Group on Water and Cultural Diversity.

RAYMOND BOISJOLY is an Aboriginal artist from Chilliwack now based in Vancouver, BC. Since completing a BFA at Emily Carr Institute (now University) and a MFA at The University of British Columbia, Boisjoly presented The Ever-Changing Light at Access Gallery (Vancouver, BC) and has participated in numerous group exhibitions and projects including How Soon Is Now at the Vancouver Art Gallery and House Systems: Fort Club at the Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University. Boisjoly has produced two projects for the public realm: Contingent Matters (2011) at the Vancouver Public Library and All That Was, Will Always Have Been, Somehow Never Again (2010) at Access Gallery (Vancouver, BC). Boisjoly was awarded a Fleck Fellowship from the Banff Centre for the Arts in 2010 and participated in the thematic residency La Commune. The Asylum. Die Bühne. at the Banff Centre in 2011. Boisjoly would like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

CHRISTIAN Bök is the author not only of Crystallography (1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, but also of Eunoia (2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. Bök teaches English at the University of Calgary.

ROB BUDDE teaches creative writing at the University of Northern British Columbia in Prince George. He has published seven books (poetry, novels, interviews, and short fiction), his most recent books being Finding Ft. George (Caitlin Press) and declining america (BookThug). His most recent interest is experimental “ecopoetry” and he is working on a study of Devil’s Club / Hoolhghulh tentatively titled Panax. Find him at writingwaynorth.blogspot.com.

JENNIFER JIHYE CHUN is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Fellow at the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author of Organizing at the Margins: The Symbolic Politics of Labor in South Korea and the United States (Cornell University Press 2009).

STEPHEN COLLIS is the author of The Commons (2008), On the Material (2010) and Lever (2011). He teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University and is currently working on a book about change and writing about the Occupy movement at occupyvancouvervoice.com

LEANNE COUGHLIN received a MFA in Visual Art from the University of British Columbia and has exhibited work locally and internationally. Through photo/video collage and other mixed media experiments, she explores her interests in architecture, surrealism, and the nature of reality in everyday experiences. Leanne lives and works in Vancouver and is Managing Editor of BC Studies.

PETER CULLEY lives on Vancouver Island and is preparing the third through sixth volumes of his ongoing cycle Hammertown and a collection of his critical prose.

DERRICK S. DENHOLM’S Dead Salmon Dialectics is ecological poetry that engages with the science of nutrient recycling in BC salmon forests. After twenty years living and working in northern forests, Denholm recently completed his MA in Creative Writing. Continuing his education, he is back working in the woods, learning directly from the source.

ADAM DICKINSON’S poems have appeared in literary journals in Canada and internationally. His work has also been anthologized in Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets. His second book Kingdom, Phylum was a finalist for the 2007 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. He teaches at Brock University in St. Catharines, ON. “Resin Identification Code,” in this issue, is from a manuscript on plastic and plasticity entitled The Polymers.

ROGER FARR is the author of Surplus (Linebooks 2006). Two new books, MEANS and IKMQ, are forthcoming. He teaches writing and literature at Capilano University, and edits CUE Books.

RYAN FITZPATRICK lives and writes from his home in Vancouver. He is the author of Fake Math (Snare Books 2007) and the forthcoming chapbook 21st Century Monsters (Red Nettle Press 2012).

GU XIONG is a Professor and a multi-media artist in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at University of British Columbia. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the China National Museum of Fine Arts and in many other museums and private collections. Gu Xiong has published two books and eight solo exhibition catalogues. His artwork has received significant critical recognition including reviews in the international art magazines Flash Art and Art in America, and The New York Times. Gu is currently working as a principal investigator on the SSHRC-funded Research/Creation project Waterscapes.

LIZ HOWARD left rural northern Ontario to pursue cognition research and poetry in Toronto. She is a member of the Influency Salon editorial group and co-cultivates the AvantGarden reading series. In 2009 she was shortlisted for the LitPop Award for poetry. Skullambient, her first chapbook, was published by Ferno House Press in 2011.

GILLIAN JEROME’S first book of non-fiction Hope In Shadows, Stories and Photographs from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (with Brad Cran) won the 2008 City of Vancouver Book Award and was shortlisted for a BC Book Prize. Her first book of poems, Red Nest (Nightwood), won the ReLit Prize for Poetry in 2010 and was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2010 . She teaches literature at UBC and edits poetry at EVENT magazine.

GERMAINE KOH is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, whose work is concerned with the significance of everyday actions, familiar objects, and common places. She has exhibited at international venues such as BALTIC, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Para/Site Art Space, Frankfurter Kunstverein, The Power Plant, The British Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Liverpool, Sydney and Montréal biennials. Koh is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

SONNET L’ABBÉ is the award-winning author of two collections of poetry, A Strange Relief and Killarnoe. She is at work on a third collection, A Sentient Mental Flower Book, that explores the homologies between people and plants. L'Abbé also reviews poetry for the Globe and Mail, and is currently writing a dissertation on the American poet Ronald Johnson at the University of British Columbia.

LARISSA LAI is an English professor at the University of British Columbia. She is the author of two novels: When Fox Is a Thousand (1995, 2004) and Salt Fish Girl (2002). Her first full-length solo poetry book Automaton Biographies (2009) was shortlisted for the Dorothy Livesay Award.

CHRISTINE LECLERC is a Vancouver-based author and activist.

CHRIS LEE is Assistant Professor of English and Associate Principal of St. John’s College at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Semblance of Identity: Aesthetic Mediation in Asian American Literature (Stanford University Press) and a co-editor of Tracing the Lines, a volume of creative and critical writing in honour of Roy Miki.

SAMUEL GARRIGÓ MEZA is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer based in Montreal. His poems have been published in dandelion and Last Supper. Individual performances and installations have recently appeared at the 50/50 Gallery, MS:T Festival, Stride Gallery, and Glenbow Museum.

KATHRYN MOCKLER received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and her BA in Honours English and Creative Writing from Concordia University. Her writing has been published most recently in The Antigonish Review, Rattle Poetry, CellStories, PIF, The Puritan, La Petite Zine, nthposition, and This Magazine, and she has poems in upcoming issues of Descant and The Windsor Review. Tightrope Books recently published her poetry book Onion Man.

ERÍN MOURE is a Montreal poet and translator whose newest work, The Unmemntioable, will appear from Anansi (Toronto) in early 2012.

SPLAB founder PAUL E NELSON wrote Organic Poetry (VDM Verlag, Germany 2008) and a serial poem re-enacting the history of Auburn, Washington, A Time Before Slaughter (Apprentice House 2010). In 26 years of radio he interviewed Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Anne Waldman, Sam Hamill, Robin Blaser, Nate Mackey, Eileen Myles, Wanda Coleman, George Bowering, Joanne Kyger, Jerome Rothenberg and others, including many Northwest poets. He lives in Seattle and writes at least one American Sentence every day.

JORDAN SCOTT is the author of Silt (New Star Books) and Blert (Coach House Books).

ELENI SIKELIANOS is the author of a hybrid memoir (The Book of Jon, City Lights) and six books of poetry, the most recent being Body Clock. Collaborative projects include film roles in several of Ed Bowes’ movies, art-books with painter Anne Slacik, installations with Peter Cole, and a performance with Philip Glass. Her work has been translated into a dozen languages, and anthologized, most recently in places such as American Hybrid and The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry.

INDRA SINGH’S work has recently appeared in Open Letter, dandelion, and on poet Sina Queyras’s blog Lemon Hound. Her writing engages with sifting soil through a space of poetry to locate transects at which disciplinary boundaries crumble into one another. Indra is currently completing a manuscript entitled Turtle Crumbles the Visible at the University of Calgary and holds a Master of Environment degree from the University of Manitoba.

JONATHAN SKINNER’S poetry collections include Birds of Tifft (BlazeVOX 2011) and Political Cactus Poems (Palm Press 2005). He founded and edits the journal ecopoetics (www.ecopoetics.org), which features creative-critical intersections between writing and ecology. Currently a Fellow with the Cornell Society for the Humanities, Skinner also writes ecocriticism on contemporary poetry and poetics.

KEVIN SPENST’S poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Prairie Fire, dandelion, Rhubarb Magazine, Poetry is Dead, The Maynard, The Enpipe Line, Ditch Poetry, and One Cool Word. His poetry manuscript, The Gang's All Down by the Abecedarium, was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Over the past year Kevin's website, http://kevinspenst.com, has focused on interviews with poets such as Linda Besner, rob mclennan, and Pearl Pirie.

JASON STARNES is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Simon Fraser University where he studies avant-garde poetry and spatial theory, with emphases on radical geography, Lacanian topologies, and Marxism. His dissertation explores the rise of disorientation and vertigo in postmodern poetry and poetics.

COLETTE ST-HILAIRE is a sociologist specialized in international development; she taught until this year at the Collège Édouard-Montpetit in Longueuil. She is the author of Quand le développement s'intéresse aux femmes - Le cas des Philippines (Harmattan 1995) and a member of the editorial board of the Quebec journal Conjunctures. She lives in the Montérégie near Montréal.

HARRIET TARLO is a poet and academic from West Yorkshire, England. She teaches Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. Poetry publications include Poems 1990-2003 (Shearsman 2004) and Nab (etruscan 2005) and Field (forthcoming). She is editor of the “Women and Eco-Poetics” feature, How2 3(2) and The Ground Aslant: An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry (Shearsman 2011). Found and rearranged text in poems two, three, five, and six of “Pears: A short sequence of poems after H.D.,” in this issue, are from H.D.’s Sea Garden and Maev Kennedy’s “Feeding the 5000: London Braves Sleet and Cold for Free Lunch,” The Guardian 16 December, 2009.

TIM TERHAAR studied philosophy and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. He writes for Tiny Mix Tapes and The Huffington Post and maintains a vegan recipe / historical novelties blog at vegetalvoracity.blogspot.com. “Rokoko,” the winning entry in TCR’s (e)contest, is his first publication on actual paper.

ARA THOMSEN lived in Bella Coola from the ages of 6-16. She fell in love with the beauty and wonder of the wilderness. Many of the images in her writing still relate to nature, the great teacher. She is almost finished her first novel. She loves animals, children, and anything creative and recently moved back to Bella Coola where she lives with her husband and two year old son.

LARY TIMEWELL, who founded Tsunami Editions, most recently published posthumous spectacle nodes (obvious epiphanies press, Japan). He spent roughly the past 20 years in Fukushima-ken, Japan, where he survived the physical but not economic fallout of the March 11th Higashi Nihon Daishinsai; he currently lives in North Vancouver.

JACQUELINE TURNER has published three books poetry with ECW Press: Seven into Even (2006), Careful (2003), and Into the Fold (2000). She teaches creative and critical writing at Simon Fraser University and Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She was Queensland’s inaugural poet-in-residence at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Brisbane, Australia.

JESSICA WILSON is an environmental / social justice activist and writer from Toronto. For the past four years, she has worked in Vancouver as Media and Communications Strategist for Greenpeace Canada, primarily on the Stop the Tar Sands campaign, as well as the Oceans, Arctic, and the Great Bear Rainforest campaigns. She came to Greenpeace after leaving the Ottawa Citizen and Dose. Jessica will soon begin a new role as communications manager for Greenpeace International's Arctic campaign.

RITA WONG is the author of sybil unrest (co-written with Larissa Lai, Line Books 2008), forage (Nightwood 2007, winner of Canada Reads Poetry 2011), and monkeypuzzle (Press Gang 1998). Her work investigates the relationships between contemporary poetics, social justice, ecology, and decolonization.